Shawn Colvin Debuts Acoustic Version Of “Cry Like An Angel”

On September 13, Shawn Colvin will release an acoustic anniversary edition of her landmark 1989 album, Steady On. Ahead of the album’s release, Colvin has shared her new take on the classic Steady On track “Cry Like An Angel,” premiering below.

Colvin wrote “Cry Like An Angel” with John Leventhal, who, as she explains, “wrote the music, the title, and the initial refrain (‘you can shout out in anger, you can laugh like a fool’).” As she did with the majority of Steady On‘s songs, Colvin wrote “Cry Like An Angel” after finding sobriety in 1983.

“That was my life’s turning point,” Colvin says of her sobriety. “It allowed me to become conscious again, to grow into myself. Gradually I found my lyrical voice and started to write songs about the journey to what I’d call enlightenment. Some songs on the record harken to a past I had suppressed, some celebrate the miracle of having survived. ‘Cry Like An Angel’ does both. I believe that in experiencing our grief we begin to heal.”

Colvin also shares that recording the updated version “Cry Like An Angel” marked the first time she had played the song in a long while, and that revisiting the track was like “reconnecting with an old friend.” The new version finds her channeling the same vulnerability as she did on the original song, but with a palpable joy and subtle strength that nods to just how far Colvin has come in the intervening years.

Watch Colvin perform “Cry Like An Angel” below.

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